Sky Website Organization

[Submerge]

Now, due to a post earlier, I've decided to construct a website specifically for Doom sky textures. I would like everyone's opinion on how I should go about doing it....

My preliminary ideas are thus:

1.
Divide the skies up into categories: this is a must...
Hellish (For hellish skies, obviously)
Rocky (For mountainous skies, like E1 and E2 of Doom)
Void/Space (For those skies that are just.... a void, you know? swirling clouds like in E4, or an endless starfield like in Vrack)
City (Cityscapes, obviously)
Other (Anything I can't think of)

2.
Group the skies by ARTIST, if possible, or at least the existing WAD that it is from. And naturally, mention if said sky is suitable for source ports, skyboxes, etc etc.

3.
The last bit here is quite important: should I offer these up as WADs, or as plain graphic files? Personally, I think plain graphic files would be best, because, if you're looking for a sky to put in your wad, you HOPEFULLY already know how to do it, and all you need is the raw image.


Lastly, of course, I'll HAVE to put a section devoted to my DM wads and such. heh.

[Xanthier]

Plain graphic files - AGREED.

Let's see

VOid
city
mountains
hell
I think you got it covered, btw has anyone done an ocean background ever?, probably not, since it would sit pretty low. I went through my library and they all fit one of those descriptions, except I would change rocky, to landscape sine some I have are hills or grass, or sand, basically anything with land in it and not just sky. man I got some really good ones too.

[Kristian Ronge]

You should probably consider including a "misc" category as well. (For example, where does Plutonia's flesh-sky fit in?)

[Submerge]

I consider that to be a 'void' sky, kristus. and I do have an 'other' category.

[Kristian Ronge]

Er.. that's KristIAN, not Kristus. :-)
And yeah, I didn't notice the "other" category. My bad.

Oh and BTW, great initiative!

[Submerge]

Xanthier said:

Plain graphic files - AGREED.

Let's see

VOid
city
mountains
hell
I think you got it covered, btw has anyone done an ocean background ever?, probably not, since it would sit pretty low. I went through my library and they all fit one of those descriptions, except I would change rocky, to landscape sine some I have are hills or grass, or sand, basically anything with land in it and not just sky. man I got some really good ones too.

Landscape is a better idea, definitely. Don't go sending me skies yet. When I'm ready to start collecting them, I'll let you all know.

Another thing I intend to put in: SKYBOXES. WADfiles with premade skyboxes ready for use by imbeciles who cannot make their own, or are too lazy to.

[iori]

I would group them thus:

Cloudy
Mountainous
City
Hellish
Void
Other

I would use GIF previews, as they are tiny, have an exact palette and are without compression.

[Xanthier]

let me know when your ready for submissions, I'm working on a few.

[Fletcher`]

Just sort by artist. Sounds like a good idea.

[EarthQuake]

Xanthier said:

let me know when your ready for submissions, I'm working on a few.

Same here, I have a few dozen you can "have."
Question though, are you accepting tall skies (256w x 200h)?

[Submerge]

I am going to accept tall skies, and label them accordingly on the listings.

[Negatronica]

I have a few skies. Should I just email them to you? Wait till the site is up?

[Submerge]

Wait til I ask, please. I'm not ready to begin on the website yet. I'm just planning for now. I have other stuff on my plate right now that has priority over the site.

EDIT: I WAS going to delete this post here, but vb won't allow me to.... it's my post though... O_o

[Submerge]

I'm ready to start accepting skies now. Send them to submerge_527@hotmail.com preferably, or post links to them here.

After talking with wastedyouth, the Sky website is going to be an offbranch of the Main IDP website (I am a member of IDP). This should work out well, since I cannot make webpages worth a tinker's damn without something like Bluefish.

MY last thoughts on organization:

Categories:

Sorted By Author/WAD
Skyboxes
Landscape
City
Void
Hell
Other

I AM accepting tall skies, and they will be marked accordingly on the site as such. Full credit will be given to the creators of each and every sky texture. If pulled from a WAD, The WAD will be credited too. And if it boils down to not even being able to make a page, I'll make a simple archive in my webspace.

Stupid idiotic skies with IMPSE and such in them will be put in it's own section.

[myk]

You should create a database that uses tags that can be applied to any sky, such as:

Clouds
Stars
Clear
Mountains
Ice
Earth
Urban
Flesh
Hell
Weird
Cartoon
Tall
Stacking
2-patch
4-patch
Red
Orange
Gray
Blue
Brown
Dark
Bright

[Submerge]

Now that's not a bad idea, but it would have to be something for the future, after the page is up and running.

[Xanthier]

I don't understand the tags thing, can somebody explain it.

[myk]

It means that instead of using fixed sections dividing the archive into different sets of skies you'd give all the tags that apply to each sky, and when a visitor clicks on one of the tags he gets all the skies that have it.

For example, a sky like DOOM II's rsky3 would show up if you clicked on either red, flesh, weird, hell or mountains, and a sky like TNT's do*hell would appear if you chose red, clouds, stacking, hell, or 4-patch. They would appear with any other skies sharing the tag the visitor chose.

[Xanthier]

got it, thanks...like search key-words, cross-referencing.

[DooMAD]

Apologies in advance for *.bmp format.

Shiny skies:

http://www.teamhellspawn.com/moonsky.bmp (256x240 which I'm informed is the correct size for Legacy tall skies)
http://www.teamhellspawn.com/redsky.bmp (256x240 but doesn't tile quite as well as it should)

Olde skies of normal Doom dimensions:

http://www.teamhellspawn.com/sky666.bmp
http://www.teamhellspawn.com/skybrown.bmp
http://www.teamhellspawn.com/skyhell.bmp
http://www.teamhellspawn.com/skylava.bmp
http://www.teamhellspawn.com/skyred.bmp
http://www.teamhellspawn.com/skystorm.bmp

http://www.teamhellspawn.com/skyuber.bmp (by DooMGoaT, not me)

[Xanthier]

those shiny skies are in the doom palette?

[DooMAD]

Surprisingly, yes. The first one only has a few shades of blue in it and there is plenty of red in the Doom palette for the second one.

[Xanthier]

I promptly lost submerge's address so I'm posting my skies here...some are edits of doom's skies and other's are original.

Here is a tall nightsky, with lightning. I don't know if there is a way to get 5 sec blink, but if there is it would work here.

http://gazler.com/users/xanthier//lightningsky.gif

And a more hellish version cause let's face it, hell versions are cool and this is doom.

http://gazler.com/users/xanthier//redltngsky.gif

here i edited doom2's cityscape so that the city looks like white hot with fire, the idea is that it's being consumed by the very flames of hell.

http://gazler.com/users/xanthier//blazecity.gif

and onto the mountains
I modded the doom2 skinface sky to look more ghostly and less hellish, the bright highlights are intentional, I thought it made it look more creepy. and a snowy mountain from Doom1 E2's sky.I also tried to make a nightsky from E3's hell sky.

http://gazler.com/users/xanthier//hauntedsky.gif

http://gazler.com/users/xanthier//icemountains.gif

http://gazler.com/users/xanthier//midntsky.gif

this one is another tall sky, of some planet. Yes it tiles well.

http://gazler.com/users/xanthier//aliensky.gif

I thought this might go well as an alternate with E1 levels.

http://gazler.com/users/xanthier//mistysky.gif

and here is more mountains, from yosemite.

http://gazler.com/users/xanthier//yosesky.gif

all these were altered from public images to the best of my knowledge, if you find something that is copyrighted, let me know!

that's all for now, more to come later :)

[Xanthier]

More skies

http://gazler.com/users/xanthier//spacey.gif
http://gazler.com/users/xanthier//misty_tall.gif
http://gazler.com/users/xanthier//mistysky2.gif
http://gazler.com/users/xanthier//marsplain.gif
http://gazler.com/users/xanthier//marspln_short.gif
http://gazler.com/users/xanthier//greyhills.gif
http://gazler.com/users/xanthier//village_mountains.gif

If anyone wants a custom sky done they can either
A) Send me a photo of the sky you want in Doom or...
B) If you have no photo, send me a description of the sky you want built from scratch, including, the colors you want used.
Have a "Nice Day!"

[DooMAD]

Found two more whilst sorting through all my old files. Apologies again for *.bmp format:

http://www.teamhellspawn.com/newred360.bmp
http://www.teamhellspawn.com/desert360.bmp

[Xanthier]

why don't you convert these to gifs?

[wildweasel]

DooMAD said:

Apologies again for *.bmp format:

I recommend getting IrfanView so you don't have to worry about that anymore.

[DooMAD]

Xanthier said:

why don't you convert these to gifs?

I've been between computers the last few weeks, having only just bought a new one and having a few problems with it. It's only in the last couple of days that I've got around to installing PSP8, so I can now convert them if you want (assuming someone hasn't already done so). But now that everything is set up properly, there won't be any more bitmaps.

Here's some nice *.gif foramt ones: